Carbon Creek (episode)
T'Pol tells Archer and Trip a story about her great-grandmother and two other Vulcans, who crash landed in a small Pennsylvania town in the year 1957. Summary T'Pol has now been on the ''Enterprise'' for exactly one year. Since Jonathan Archer has to send a report to Starfleet about her, he takes some time to know her a little more. At one point, he asks her the reason she went to visit Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania when she was still on Earth. She has qualified it as of a personal matter at first, but Trip is able to convince her to tell them "a story". So she begins the story of the first Vulcan-Human First Contact that happened in 1957 in Carbon Creek. Trip objects siting the fact that all Earth children learn in school that the first contact between Vulcans and Humans occurred at Bozeman, Montana, but T'Pol continues her story. A Vulcan ship was performing a survey from orbit after the recent Sputnik I launch by the humans. Unfortunately, they had impulse manifold problems and were forced into an emergency landing. Their captain died in the crash, leaving T'Mir (T'Pol's second foremother (great-grandmother) who beared a striking resemblance to T'Pol) in command of the three surviving Vulcans. They did not want any contact with humans but were eventually forced into contact when they ran out of emergency rations. After five days of starvation, Mestral decided to seek some food (they encountered two deer, but since Vulcans are vegetarians, they decided there were not yet desperate enough to eat these). The adventurous Vulcan provided his crewmates with local currencies when he convinced T'Mir to let him play a game of pool (that wouldn't even have challenged a Vulcan child with its simple geometry). Beginning to consider that their distress call had not been received, the three build a life for themselves, finding employment and an apartment. Eventually, Mestral becomes very interested in human culture and makes many friends. He even defends them when T'Mir says they are worthless people, only trying to destroy each other by any means they have. Even if T'Mir is not willing to make deeper contact with the humans, her opinion changes a bit when she has a conversation with a boy named Jack, whose mind is very open (he showed interests in meditation and astronomy, as well as other things). A little after, there is an accident in the mine where Mestral is working and he convinces T'Mir to let him save the miners, his friends, with the help of Vulcan technology, they are careful to keep away from the humans. After about four months, a Vulcan ship finally arrives, saying their distress call made it to Vulcan through a Tellarite freighter. Mestral decides he doesn't want to go back to Vulcan as he doesn't want to let the chance slip by to study an emerging civilization (he was probably still alive and on hand when the Phoenix first went to warp). T'Mir also showed that her time on Earth had some effects on her and decides to sell Velcro (an invention that would change the world) to help Jack enter college. When the rescue shuttle arrives, T'Mir says that Mestral died in the crash together with the captain, letting her crewmate stay on Earth. Back in the present, Archer and Trip just don't know what to think as this has never been told to humans before. T'Pol says that the event is very well documented in the Vulcan archives, but maintains the ambiguity by saying that she just told "a story". It seems that they were real events however, since T'Pol returns to her quarters and takes out the purse her great-grandmother had while on Earth. Background Information * Dominic Keating (Lt. Malcolm Reed), John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox), Anthony Montgomery (Ensign Travis Mayweather) and Linda Park (Ensign Hoshi Sato) do not appear in this episode. * This episode takes place on the first anniversary of T'Pol's assignment to ''Enterprise''. It is also revealed that the previous record for a Vulcan serving on an Earth starship was ten days. *J. Paul Boehmer previously played Vornar in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Tacking Into the Wind". * This is the first mentioning of the Tellarites on Star Trek: Enterprise. * In reality, Velcro was invented by George de Mestral. This is where Mestral got his name. * New, lighter blue-colored Starfleet jumpsuits were produced for the second season, but not seen until this episode. At first worn by only the regular cast members, the new uniform color eventually became more widely used as the season continued. *This episode was shot before "Shockwave, Part II", though aired after. *This episode's opening scenes and premise are very similar to an earlier novel, "Strangers from the Sky", which described a pre-first contact crash of a Vulcan scout ship on Earth. Links and References Guest Stars *Jolene Blalock as T'Mir *J. Paul Boehmer as Mestral *Michael Krawic as Stron *Ann Cusack as Maggie *Hank Harris as Jack *Clay Wilcox as Billy *David Selburg as Vulcan Captain *Ron Marasco as Vulcan Officer *Paul Hayes as Businessman References alcohol; aliens; Armstrong, Neil; annual crew evaluation; astronomy; atomic bomb; baseball; Bozeman; Buddhist monks; Carbon Creek; Carlsbad Caverns; Cochrane, Zefram; cryogenics; deer; distress call; Doylestown; D'Vahl; emergency rations; fakirs; First Contact; frozen fish sticks; Garrett, Mrs.; Gavin; geometry; India; I Love Lucy; Mars; Mechanical engineering; Moe; Montana; movie; nuclear device; particle weapon; Pennsylvania; Phoenix; Pine Tree; pool; President of the United States; protein replicator; quartz; satellite; Sausalito; Sputnik I; subspace transceiver; Tellarite freighter; Tellarite; Tellus; television; Three Stooges, The; Tibet; Tim; TV dinner; Twilight Zone, The; warp field engineer; waveform discriminator; Velcro; Vulcan; Vulcan High Command; Vulcan Science Directorate; Vulcan Space Council; Vulcan survey vessel; Vulcans; Yellowstone Park. Category: ENT episodes de:Carbon Creek (Episode) nl:Carbon Creek (aflevering)